(If you meant literally fentanyl, which was only an example, it's still being smuggled in illegally to the US from China through Mexico, so the amount is still quite abundant in the US.) — Mikie

A pretty poor example, then.

Especially, since the "war on drugs" is a great example of how ignoring root causes impedes the solving of the problem.

I would.

Of course I oppose any monopoly on violence. Arms races and the control of resources by that monopoly is occurring right now.

And if all those restrictions disappeared tomorrow would you start driving through red lights and murdering your fellows? — NOS4A2

I'd probably go through more red lights if I thought the rule wasn't enforced, sure. Murdering people, no.

People make up rules for many reasons. Sometimes they're justified, other times they're unjust. Some are commonsensical, others are aren't. I'm glad that we have made rules that punish people who break them.

True, we don't need a state for this. But to argue against any and all rules is absurd.

I would.

Of course I oppose any monopoly on violence. — NOS4A2

Of course, you could oppose it morally and I may even admire you for that, but the result is you'd be enslaved by those with the resources to outgun you. So, you better hope you don't get what you wish for.

To argue that only those in power get to make rules is absurd. No man is good enough to be another’s master

So be it. I suppose the one consolation is that history looks kindly on the just, while those who control us live on in a rogues gallery.

I'll repeat the example, with bold:

If fentanyl deaths skyrocketed in country Z, and it turned out country Z was an outlier not in drug use but in the amount of, and ease of access to, fentanyl -- then call me crazy, but my first priority would not be to discuss the prevalence of substance abuse. It would be to restrict the amount of, and ease of access to, fentanyl.

It's not a war on drugs or guns. It's saying that, all else being equal, country Z has a problem with this particular object. Other countries don't have the fentanyl deaths we do not because they don't have more potential drug abusers, but because they don't have the amount of fentanyl. Pretty simple.

A flawed example, of course, because it's harder to get fentanyl than it is to buy an assault weapon. Now imagine saying, "What we need to do in order to fight fentanyl deaths is to increase the availability of fentanyl." That would be absurd.

That's a little fatalistic isn't it? It sounds like you're saying that since controlling people is bad and freedom is good, we should let human nature take its course regardless of the consequences. Isn't it possible that controlling people is sometimes necessary and that's just a bitter pill we need to swallow?

People make up rules for many reasons. Sometimes they're justified, other times they're unjust. Some are commonsensical, others are aren't. I'm glad that we have made rules that punish people who break them.

True, we don't need a state for this. But to argue against any and all rules is absurd. — Mikie

To argue that only those in power get to make rules is absurd. No man is good enough to be another’s master — NOS4A2

Nothing in what I said suggested any of that. People create rules, not some elite class of people, not "those in power," not the deep state. People. In any society. In hunter gatherer societies. People make rules all the time. Rules are a good thing, and so is authority -- provided they can be justified.

So I repeat: to argue against any and all rules is absurd.

Since people make rules all the time, and since you’re a person, what rules have you made?

A flawed example, of course, because it's harder to get fentanyl than it is to buy an assault weapon. — Mikie

It's a flawed example because illegalizing drugs has not led to a decrease in drug use, and it can even be argued it led to the creation of ever more deadly drugs.

Human nature has already taken its course and I’ve long resigned to my fate as someone’s serf. I can only hope that I pass before it self-immolates.

Restricting my rights does not benefit me. — NOS4A2

On the subject of rights, let's look at the Bill of Rights:

Amendment II
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Let's use an originalist interpretation. Something Scalia talked a great deal about but failed to do when he decided Heller.

A well regulation Militia was needed because there was no standing army. With a standing army a militia is no longer necessary to the security of a free state. In addition what is at issue here is the security of the state not of an individual within the state.

The right to keep and bear arms is a right that is contingent upon the necessity of securing a free state.

Scalia ignored his own principle of originalist interpretation when he arbitrarily inserts "in common use" and applies it to common use today rather than then. He inserted it for two reasons. One, there are considerable differences between a knife or musket and a semiautomatic rifle and he wanted to assure that those who had guns could keep them. Two, he knew there must be limits to the weapons that might become available to the public. A limit the Founders did not see as necessary because they could not imagine that there could be such weapons.

The Bill of Rights does not include the right of Yahoos to keep and bear high power automatic weapons. This is very far from a musket toting well regulated militia.

Which is the bigger problem, someone with a mental illness or someone with a mental illness in possession of a semiautomatic rifle?

The constitution still allows slavery and taxation. I do not look at it as any standard-bearer of rights, but nonetheless, the bill of rights says “the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people”. We do retain the right of yahoos to keep and bear weapons.

"By the people" does not mean by a person over and against the people It is a collective term consonant with the "general good" and the interests of a free state. Automatic weapons in everyone's hands threatens the general good and a free state.

Exactly, “the people” is in fact not the people, the flesh-and-blood residents of a given jurisdiction. Like the “general good”, it’s some abstract universal found floating in the mind of a collectivist, and rather than apply to all people, it apples to some people.

In my family, often enough. Plenty of them.

Otherwise I vote for rules directly via referenda, and I elect others to do so. Those others are also people. If I don’t like what rules they create, I vote them out. There are other ways of creating rules as well, at the local level.

But I guess the point there was supposed to be something about “statism” blah blah blah

illegalizing drugs — Tzeentch

I don’t want to make drugs illegal. I don’t want to make guns illegal.

This shooter bought a gun legally, incidentally.

But “illegalizing” drugs does work in some cases. I don’t hear about many Quaalude addictions anymore…

The “war on drugs” was never about drugs anyway. It was about criminalizing minority life. Ditto “law and order.”

It’s not that we have more bad people, it’s that the bad people we have can go into a store or a gun show and purchase one of the 400 million guns in the US with ease and then go shoot up a school.

We have been through this before. More than once. I don't know if it is a genuine failure to understand the concept of the general good or the failure to acknowledge the importance of anyone but yourself.

failure to acknowledge the importance of anyone but yourself. — Fooloso4

Ding ding ding. That one.

More gun ownership corresponds with more gun murders across virtually every axis: among developed countries, among American states, among American towns and cities and when controlling for crime rates. And gun control legislation tends to reduce gun murders, according to a recent analysis of 130 studies from 10 countries.

…

After Britain had a mass shooting in 1987, the country instituted strict gun control laws. So did Australia after a 1996 shooting. But the United States has repeatedly faced the same calculus and determined that relatively unregulated gun ownership is worth the cost to society.

That choice, more than any statistic or regulation, is what most sets the United States apart.

“In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate,” Dan Hodges, a British journalist, wrote in a post on Twitter two years ago, referring to the 2012 attack that killed 20 young students at an elementary school in Connecticut. “Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/world/americas/mass-shootings-us-international.html

So yeah, maybe it really is a mental health crisis after all: the mental illness of gun worshippers that enable this to happen.

I believe rights are naturally founded, derived from human nature, and not the edicts of those in power. — NOS4A2

Ah finally it's clear. You have a theory of law stemming from the middle ages. No wonder almost all your ideas are regressive.

...some abstract universal found floating in the mind of a collectivist ... — NOS4A2

The American Founders were collectivists?

The reason most countries can afford to disarm their populace and claim moral victory is because American weaponry protects them while they sleep.

Worth highlighting how stupid this statement is, lest it slips through the cracks.

Nearly every country on earth has a military, whether aligned with the US or not. Every other nation on earth has less mass shootings than us. You can have a peaceful country, a military, and legal domestic gun use.

Ukraine wasn’t attacked because its people weren’t allowed to stock up on AR-15s. It has a military. To somehow get all of this mixed up with domestic gun policy shows how far one must go to make sure kids continue to be murdered because you think Murray Rothbard is cool.

You make rules for family. Very good. You can govern your own household. Except it doesn’t follow that you or anyone else ought to have the same authority of over people who are not your kin.

But then you sell your own and anyone else’s authority to the next political campaign. In this we get the greatest political theory known to man. “I make a mark next to someone’s name. if I don’t like what they do I put a mark next to someone else’s name in a few years. Something something democracy”. Except it’s the rule of some people over others, what with politicians with constituents in the millions.

Your insistence on controlling people and restricting their rights betrays whatever obsequious obedience you’ll display at the ballot box every other year, and whatever nonsense you speak in the name of democracy. You participate in the charades of the greatest monopolies known to history, and advocate for corporatism of the worst kind. Sorry, man, that’s a hard pass for me.

Legal positivism is quite medieval. But then again maybe you’re speaking of some other theory, perhaps one arising in the disco era. No wonder.

Jesus, what a weak come back. You probably shoot like you talk, not able to hit anything either. Guns and words are wasted on you.

No need for sour grapes. What’s your hip political theory called?